Bradley G. Bledsoe Downes – Chief Strategy Officer & General Counsel

Mr. Bledsoe Downes is an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation and has years of experience in Indian affairs with over three years as an on-reservation tribal attorney. Mr.Bledsoe Downes has assisted tribes with negotiation of tribal-state gaming compacts under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (“IGRA”) and was a member of the executive steering committee for California’s Proposition 5 (1998). Mr. Bledsoe Downes’ tribal background and reservation-based experience have resulted in a unique understanding of the political and legal landscapes regarding Indian affairs, Indian gaming issues, and the day-to-day impacts of state and federal policies on Indian tribes and individual Indians. Mr. Bledsoe Downes has a practical understanding of the corporate and business transactional practice and has assisted tribes in complex business ventures. Mr. Bledsoe Downes has negotiated and implemented complex business transactions for the development, financing and management of casinos and ancillary development for several tribal governments, including related real property transactions, fee to trust applications, leases, and loans for tribal governments.

Mr. Bledsoe Downes also has extensive experience in drafting tribal constitutions, codes, ordinances and policies, including tribal court codes and procedures, election and enrollment ordinances, Class II and Class III gaming ordinances, human resource policies and procedures. In addition to his extensive experience in Indian gaming, Mr. Bledsoe Downes has dealt as a tribal attorney with all facets of tribal government and jurisdictional issues, including law enforcement, timber management and sales, land acquisition, regulatory authority and taxation, Indian child welfare, energy development, tribal business and financial development, water rights, self-governance, housing, education, health care, taxation, environmental, employment and labor, tribal tort claim defense, and issues relating to tribal enrollment and tribal sovereign immunity.